Over at IA Summit 09 (by Boxes and Arrows people), Nathan Curtis of EightShapes presented their super methodical “UX Design & Deliverable Systems”. The presentation is now available as podcast at Boxes and Arrows blog.

From the intro excerpt:

One thing is brutally clear: no teams – in fact, no two individuals – seem to produce deliverables like wireframes the same way. And that’s a shame. Too many designers seem guided by the flawed notion that not just design but documentation too must be ever unique. This leaves readers flustered, confused, and often dismissive. Even worse, not adopting a uniform approach may diminish a team’s influence and credibility, and, possibly, our discipline’s role in the industry.

This session, lead by Nathan Curtis of EightShapes, shares practical techniques that his organization has learned from, taught, and embedded in teams. Just as important, attendees learn to avoid failures Nathan and his team have experienced along the way.

I was listening to the podcast on my was to office, liked the processes a lot. Here comes the great news!

EightShapes released their complete collection of templates, libraries, and other assets as EightShapes Unify, FREE for download! That’s a good enough incentive to start using Indesign.

EightShapes Unify is a collection of templates, libraries, and other assets that enable user experience designers to create more consistent, effective deliverables faster. The system utilizes the Adobe Creative Suite of products; primarily, Adobe InDesign is the key authoring tool.

The system is often used by designers – and larger user experience teams – to rapidly produce artifacts like design strategy, wireframes, style guides, specs, and more. The system has many parts, but the basic templates and symbol libraries are pretty straightforward:

• Document templates (such as an 8.5×11 letter landscape format) that includes text variables for titles, print-friendly versions, varied grids, and a deep reservoir of type, object, and table styles
• Page layouts for approximately 100 common page layouts, such as a chunked wireframe, color palette for a style guide, component specs, mental models, personas, and competitive two-by-two plots
• Symbol libraries for flows, maps, markers (little numbered circles), callouts, frames (like a box with jagged bottom into which you place a wireframe), project plans, reviews, and more
• Scriptable document starting points for when you create standard documents (like a competitive analysis) or need to automate the starting point for a larger document (like a style guide)

The site is loaded with awesome resources, including video tutorials like: Quickstart on Prototyping with Wireframes